Updated 11:02 a.m. BREAKING NEWS: Vandals hire Erickson to lead football program

The University of Idaho has scheduled a press conference for 6:30 p.m. MST today to announce Dennis Erickson as their new football coach.

The popular Erickson is returning to the Moscow campus, where he won 32 games and a Big Sky Conference championship in four previous seasons with the program (1982-85).

He went on to win two national championships at the University of Miami and became a head coach in the NFL with San Francisco and Seattle.

A public reception is scheduled for tonight, following the press conference on campus.

Erickson, 58, replaces Nick Holt, who resigned Sunday after two seasons with the program. He left to become the defensive line coach with the St. Louis Rams of the NFL, then changed his mind Tuesday and took a job as defensive coordinator at Southern California.

Erickson did not coach last season after being fired by the 49ers, who are paying him $2.5 million per year as part of a contract buyout.

Holt earned about $205,000 a year with the Vandals.

â€œItâ€™s not about the money, itâ€™s about coaching â€¦ Iâ€™m a coach,â€™â€™ Erickson said earlier this week. â€œItâ€™s all Iâ€™ve done all my life. Making me sit out last year made me appreciate it even more.â€

Erickson has been living outside San Jose, Calif., and maintains a vacation home on Lake Coeur dâ€™Alene.

The only football coaches with better career records at Idaho were two former Erickson assistants: Keith Gilbertson (28-9, .757) from 1986-88 and John L. Smith (53-21, .716) from 1989-94.

Erickson guided the University of Miami to national championships in 1989 and 1991. He coached in the NFL for six years, posting a 40-56 record with Seattle and San Francisco.

MOSCOW, Idaho -- Dennis Erickson returned to Idaho on Wednesday to become head coach at the school that gave him his start.

Erickson, 58, who won two national championships at Miami, got his first head coaching job at Idaho in 1982. He left after the '85 season for a string of college jobs and eventually ended up in the NFL.

His last stop was San Francisco, where after two disappointing seasons with the 49ers he was fired in January 2005.

"I just thought it was an opportunity for me to come back, give back and get back to coaching college football ... my first love," Erickson said at a news conference.

At Idaho, he succeeds Nick Holt, who returned to Southern California as defensive coordinator after changing his mind about becoming an assistant with the St. Louis Rams.

Erickson signed a five-year contract worth about $200,000 a year, but with bonuses, it could be worth a total of about $1.5 million over the duration the contract, athletic director Rob Spear said.

Idaho is entering its second season in the Western Athletic Conference. The Vandals were 5-18 in two years under Holt, including 2-9 last season.

Despite the struggles, Erickson called Moscow "a good fit" for him.

Erickson has been unemployed since the 49ers fired him. He still receives $2.5 million per year from the 49ers. He was fired with three years left on his five-year, $12.5 million contract.

Erickson turned Idaho into one of the nation's top Division I-AA teams during his first stint with the Vandals. He was 144-57-1 as a head coach at Idaho, Wyoming, Washington State, Miami and Oregon State. His Miami teams won national championships in 1989 and 1991.

He had less success in the NFL, going 31-33 in four years at the helm of the Seattle Seahawks and 9-23 with the 49ers.

Between NFL jobs he revived a foundering Oregon State program, directing the Beavers to a 31-17 record, including a school-best mark of 11-1 and a 41-9 victory over Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl in the 2000 season.

"The challenge here is to win, to compete for the conference championship and to go to bowl games," Erickson said. "Yeah, I love it here. I came here because I'm a football coach and I want to help the University of Idaho become successful."

Some of the Idaho players who watched the news conference from the balcony of a new weight room are getting their third head coach in five years.

Erickson said he met with the players Wednesday and talked about the work they will have to do to be competitive in the WAC.

"I looked in these guys' eyes and they are ready to go and get it done," he said.

Erickson said he planned to meet with current Vandals assistants but said some of his former assistants have expressed interest in joining him.

The Vandals' first three games next season are against Michigan State, where former Idaho coach John L. Smith is head coach; Washington State and Oregon State, both teams Erickson formerly coached.

Spear said Erickson's return first came up last fall, when he ran into Erickson at a resort and asked if he would be interested in coaching in a non-Bowl Championship Series conference.

When he got word recently that Holt might be leaving, he called Erickson to remind him of their earlier conversation, Spear said.

1014 wrote:coincidently, he was also an assistant coach of san jose state under jack elway (john's dad)

Actually, here is a trivia point for you guys. Jack Elway learned the spread offense from Jack Neumeier. These two guys are regarded as the "founding fathers" of the one back spread passing offense. Dennis Erickson, Mike Price, Joe Tiller are regarded as their disciples. Actually, Neumeier got his idea of spreading it out and throwing by reading Tiger Ellison's book on the run and shoot in the 1960s. He just didn't add the complex route conversions.

For us UH fans, the run and shoot was founded by Glenn Tiger Ellison and Mouse Davis. And that June Jones, Kevin Gilbride, and the late Red Fraught were RNS disciples.

Or if you really want to see some NFL family trees, Sid Gillman and Paul Brown begot Walsh and Walsh begot all these West Coast offense coaches like Holmgren, Siefert, Mariucci, etc. with their emphasis of the horizontal stretch in passing.

The other family tree in the NFL is the Don Coryell tree (who also got his ideas from Sid Gillman but the emphasis is on the vertical stretch on passing and a power running game) and you get Norv Turner, Zampesee, Mike Martz, and Joe Gibbs etc.

"Walk a single path, becoming neither cocky with victory nor broken with defeat." --- Jigoro Kano, The Founder of Judo

Just to add, each of these coaches put their own tweaks to these offenses while keeping the essential ideals in place. Here are some examples:

Spread: While Tiller, Price, and Erickson pretty much stick to the air it out and run the draw mentality of the original spread. The coaches at Northwestern, Michigan State, and West Virginia are running what is called a "power spread" where they spread the defense out but the run sets up all the passes.

Run and shoot: JJ uses the shotgun and incorporated West Coast concepts from Walsh. It looks very different from Mouse's offense. Red Fraught used straight QB dropback passes from under center, not the rollouts and half rolls usually associated with the classic RNS.

West Coast. Many Walsh disciples, put their own spin on the offense. Shanahan likes to spread it out on the passing game and devised a zone run not found in Walsh's concepts. Mariucci is very conservative in his play calling, likes to run. Gruden also likes power running. Holmgren for the most part is the one coach today whose offense is most true to Walsh but with Shaun Alexander in the backfield, you gotta call plays to get the ball to him. Also, Holmgren was an assistant at BYU and he is the coaching family tree link to Walsh and Chow.

Air Coryell: Mike Martz likes to spread it out and air it out. Norv Turner and Zampese like balanced attacks with a power run game (i.e. see the Dallas Cowboy's offense of the 1990's.) Joe Gibbs likes to emphasize bunch formations and a power run game usually featuring a one back attack with an H-Back not a full back lead blocking.

Just to add: Norm Chow. BYU passing offense, very similar to Walsh in concepts. But Chow learned from Doug Scovil but this offense developed independently from Walsh. Steve Young said that the footwork was very different from Walsh, but the passing concepts were similar. Arm chair QBs on the internet have said that Walsh had about 120 plays in his playbook not counting variations. BYU/Chow reportedly had FIVE runs, Eight passes with a 3 step drop and 10 passes with a 5 step drop plus a few screens. What Chow did was run them from a ton of formations, different personnel groupings, used motions and had tags at the end of each play to change WR or RB's route/protection so his 25 base plays actually looked like over 100 different plays on tape.

Finally, the "Air Raid" offenses of Mike Leach at Texas Tech, and Hal Mumme of New Mexico State got their playbook from Chow. Leach I believe went to BYU. They just added the "wide O-Line Splits" and run their plays exclusively from 3-4 WR sets with a throw on almost every down mentality. Also, Leach did say that he got his screen package from the run and shoot. But his offense is not the run and shoot. There are no on the fly adjustments to coverage. The routes are set.

This pretty much covers the family trees of most of the offenses we see run on TV today. These are not the only ones, but this covers a lot.

"Walk a single path, becoming neither cocky with victory nor broken with defeat." --- Jigoro Kano, The Founder of Judo